Party

The launch of Party at Kings Lynn Poetry Festival. Left Judith Kazantzis and right the late Peter Porter.

Party was one of the first three books published by Michael Hulse's press, Leviathan when he launched it in 2000. Michael is a highly respected poet, translator and editor. The Leviathan books are beautifully produced and one of the others in Michael's launch series was Kit Wright's brilliant Hoping It Might Be So.

Party

The room's filling up with people I've known.They leave wine circles on the mantelpiece,open windows, change tapes in the cassette,flick through books and photo albums.Someone's taken yesterday's paper from the binand is looking for a story. They tell each otherabout themselves, kiss at the bottom of the stairs,turn down lights and move into the garden with cushionsand rugs. They eat bite-sized tarts and tread on toys,twist hair and press pendants into thumbs, scratch and cough.Some have come back from the dead. They cling to drainpipesand stand on shoulders, stretch for upstairs windows.The hall is packed and cars fill the road, spill up side streets - they've reached the racecourse. Floorboards give waycollapse into the cellar. The music's so loud it interruptsmy heartbeat. My clothes are handed out to those who are cold.All the paper in the house is torn up to write numbers on.They take over the cemetery. A hotel pianistand bass-player I fancied set up a stage with fallenheadstones. Friends with children organise a crèche.A succession of plumbers who never understood my boilerspot-weld standpipes. The detectives and para from Aldershotwho once lived upstairs, arrange a military display.Part-time djs - van driver, computer salesmanand personal trainer from the gym - spin three decades,45s to CDs. All the men I've ever been out withare put in discussion groups by women friends.Women from the ferries, shops, kennels, bars, temp agenciesand language school arrange shift work at minimal payfor the handful of chief executives who've shown up. Relativeshave comfortable chairs away from the partyand all those cash-only landlords offer free rooms overnight. Photographers take polaroids of everyone.A man from the allotments hands out runner bean polesand the electrician's run a cable to a photocopier.Every face is enlarged to the size of a flagas in demonstrations for the missing - husbands, wives,toddlers, teenagers, street children, grandfathers,aunts, cousins, neighbours, workmates, friends.

Ruth Padel included a poem from Party
in her Sunday poem series in 2001. It appeared
on 28 January, my birthday.

RiggingIf we'd taped that rainy night in the carwhen we sat drinking with the windows down,staring at the lights of two cottageson the island opposite, it would play backnothing but breathing, the door openingand closing as you checked the childrenin the tent, a cork pulled from a bottle,the Atlantic below, reclaiming another inchof the peninsula, wind rustling a plasticrubbish bag, damp matches scraped uselesslyon the dashboard and you tapping a rhythmon your glass with a pencil - like riggingagainst masts, beached above the tideline,bared of sails and wet with spray.

Gagarin's moon

(Every month, the moon returns to the same place

in the sky as the day a child is born.)

Over the hoover,
my mother sings 'Moon River',

or what she knows
of it, "wider than a mile",

da daa dada da
daaa, humming the rest

as she dresses
naked dolls. The song's from

Breakfast at Tiffany's, Mercer and Mancini's

Oscar win of 1961.
Just after midday, nearly full,

it's faded and
blurred as a washed-out print.

But at night, my
mother brings binoculars,

names craters and
seas, lets me scan the surface.

It's as if I'm
there, just looking over a hill.

I want to fill its
holes with milk, hate

anyone giving it a
face. The moon in the day

is a tunnel into
these nights. The two of us

so close, the sky
enormous, this other place.

Sunbeam Talbot

The Guardia Civil
is out of the picture.

Against a tinted
backdrop with relief

the heads of two
flamenco dancers just touch.

An airbubble above
them is all that allows

the water to move,
glitter to float and fall.

They smile as if
they are not gasping for it.

It came from a
souvenir shop at the port

in Algeciras,
before the 10 a.m. ferry to Tangiers.

Franco's armed
police everywhere, the open-topped

Sunbeam Talbot
lures children at every junction.

In my front room
now, the three-balled pendulum

twists under the
glass dome of that clock

from my aunt's
flat. Once I believed it would never

stop, that it
would keep perfect time

as if the dome
protected it from lost minutes,

extra half hours -
a metronome behind

her new high-heels
hurrying along the quay.

Christmas

i

Plums and apples
are gone now. Houses

flatten the old
fruit farm, long and ranch-like,

Dutch Reform. At
night, security lights flash

circles on lawns,
outdoor stages for cats

breaking the beam.
Dogs leap at fences,

rattling mesh the
way their owners might shake

a pedigree.
Gardeners move in slow motion,

avoiding sudden
moves, as if they're pushing thighs

against water.
Released from the snarls

the road home
feels like a dance floor.

This is exile for
city whites; sudden power cuts,

unaccustomed
poisonous snakes, serum

in the fridge,
farmers as comfortable with guns

as slitting the
throat of a screaming pig.

They have slipped
through the necklace of mines

around
Johannesburg: uranium, gold, sulphur, clay,

silver, dolomite,
coal, diamonds; swapping

once comfortable
suburbs for poultry sheds.

The nearest town
is sixties Afrikaaner style,

austere as a
frontier post, without statues or gardens.

There's nowhere to
hang around, just car parks

and warehouse
shops, one bank, one chemist.

It's Christmas Eve
and we're buying meat - steak, sausages,

chops - sold in
brai packs, clear plastic bags.

They could be
windows into a body.

There's no shop
assistants

in funny hats just
the heat, not enough shade,

queues at the
butcher's and guards at the off-licence

stacked floor to
ceiling with beer.

At the bank they
ask where you got your pounds,

not believing your
passport; its stamps from Denmark,

England, Ghana,
Switzerland like pressed flowers

in an inherited
book. It takes more than half an hour

to change money.
You'd think they were giving it away,

each form
handwritten, slow as a child,

large, round
numbers pressed too hard into the paper.

She can't work out
the passport number, I am itching

to argue, you
restrain me, knowing better.

ii

We lie on the bed
watching a game show -

applause and
crackling interference -

sleep end to end
like the wax family

in Johannesburg's
Museum of Africa

past the
reconstructed bushman,

recorded
resistance speeches. We raid

our children's
stockings for the neighbour's.

Your mother peels vegetables

from the 'Deliverance'
market;

feathery carrots,
cabbages - leaves chewed into lace.

Driving here, the
clucks from the chicken

trussed in the
back are all that interrupts

our silence. We
must come before dark,

your mother
commands. People will be drinking.

We're in time for
the coalman. You hoist our son

into his
horse-drawn cart, pay for the bags

the Aga will burn
all day tomorrow, warming

the fermenting
African beer, stewing meat, boiling rice

and pap.
Electricity cables droop like washing lines

above us,
criss-crossing into an unfinished net

above this city of
ochre and tin.

In the morning the
smoke rises vertically

as if it, too, is
determined to escape. Your brothers

arrive, prompting
the first muffled row

about who was
buying drink. Children come early

to share the soap
we brought your mother

then splash around
the standpipe with our son.

Plates are filled,
washed, filled again

and everyone
dances. I cannot.

She insists I must
be out again before dark.

Walking

The man walking
alone on the road

wrapped in a
blanket, knows a lift will come.

A hundred miles
between petrol stations

with his country
beyond a range of mountains

to his east, he
feels his muscles relax

as the gradient
straightens out

after the long
haul up from the wine region

with its
vineyards, water tanks and grass

cooled by mist.
Now there will be nothing

but lay-bys with
trees and no taps. He carries

water, used to
this trek and knows someone

will stop. There's
no need to put out a thumb

on a road like
this, where crossroads are rare

as water, speed is
constant as the scrub.

It won't be
holiday-makers; they flap past,

windows dark as
popstars', languid hands

dipped in air as
if it was a private pool.

It won't be
lorries; pummelling the road

like jack-hammers.
It may be a mini-bus

full of Sowetans with
a spare seat, leaving

for Johannesburg at
dawn, after trading

factory bought china,
hand-painted pots,

for unwanted
clothes. The man walking alone

is tiny at first.
We see him for miles, bobbing

in and out of the
mirage like a seal we saw

swimming in the
bay near Cape Town.

Its tail, ragged
as seaweed, kept pace

as you jogged from
the fish wholesalers

on the jetty to
the beach carpark. Then he's in

the mirror, his
face gone as if it was flashed on tv.

There'll be
another, like the nought

on the mileometer
which keeps coming round.

Flight paths

Lower Bourne

We watch the foxes
over the stream

in rough grass
below the woods.

My mother calls
from the sink

when they bring
the cubs out.

At night we listen
to the vixen scream.

So when the old
man with Jack Russells lays traps

we force his metal
jaws shut,

dig for a day with
seaside spades

a pit deep enough
to break his leg, push

sharpened stakes
into sand, camouflaged

with dead leaves, a
lattice-work of twigs.

Waiting for something to happen

When the peonies
come out, hailstones

batter the fullest
heads into mounds of petals

as if a group of
women had stepped out

of identical
dresses and walked away.

We lift bikes over
stiles and pedal the river

bank for views
into back gardens,

the dry smell of
cow parsley and grasses

as familiar as the
sun on skin,

to the rope swing
where the river's shallow.

Beyond the moss
under beech trees,

studded with last
year's husks,

roads funnel heat
between banked hedges

and perimeters of
rhododendrons,

while we count
magpies,

blow shrieks from
couch grass and unpeel

poppy buds, the
petals like unironed

silk, wrapped
methodically

as parachutes,
trying not to tear them.

Elstead

At Thursley Moat I
listen for curlews

with Rod. We walk
over the bog

on a wooden path.
Beside an oily ditch,

a sundew; just
denting the membrane

of water, a raft
spider waiting

for skaters. We
sit in the sun. This is as quiet

as Surrey gets.
Could I map it?

Above, a
helicopter, to the right,

a road. A cough,
shoe scraping board,

lawn-mower, a dog
barking,

a horse; all draw
radials of sound.

I'm hiding again
in bracken,

holding my breath,
watching friends

tread past
unaware. It's 24 years

since I heard no
cars, no aircraft.

Hankley

At weekends, or
when evenings last

my mother puts us
in the old grey Rover

with the dog and
drives to Hankley.

In the pond, by
the car park, fishermen

hunch under
umbrellas big as tents,

nets slouched in
the shallows, and summon

pike strong enough
to take a hand off.

The water never
moves. This is the place

in the woods we
walk away from.

The pond's too
much like home.

On the common we
struggle through sand

churned up by
trucks. She warns us

to stay out of the
heather, where lost flares

and cartridges
hide, unexploded. We walk,

and talk more
easily than in the house.

The sky opens us
up and in summer

it's as if fire
cracks in every stem of heather,

burns in the sun
on our necks

the prickly heat
reddening my mother's hands,

in clumps of
beaters, stacked like paddles

waiting for
canoes, and a river to carry them.

Then it's gone.
Leaving patches of charcoal,

maps of new
territories scored into purple;

landmarks which
will last a year at most.

There were Daleks
here. We know

there are targets
where soldiers lie low

on their stomachs
and wait, like the pike.

Shackleford

(for Rob
Fairbanks)

Andrew has a map
out. He's reading

off names: Nine
Acre, Great Piece,

Thorn Bears, Bar
Field, Middle Horse

Hatch, Stony
Windsor. He can track

his family over
this acreage

and beyond,
precisely as the pedigree

of a bull. Fields
of pasture are lumpy

with burrows,
neatly sown crops

eaten ragged.
Rabbits grey as molehills

flatten themselves
into grass, hunted

by a man from
Special Branch, his rifle

silenced to a
thud. Above him, a cow's digging

a hole into red
earth with her hooves.

Another's
supervising a dozen calves

under trees, while
their mothers eat.

Rooks raid pig
feed. They know Andrew's car.

By the time he
stops at the gate, the sky's full

- a gust of
charred paper, cackling.

Between maps

I watch from the
woods as neighbours dismantle

walls, share
timbers, stones, cows, sheep, goats.

In 16 years the
village vanishes. You can trace

a star - pace each
path, seven of them,

climb to the
ridge, stop to stroke a dead elm,

stoop through
willows along the dry stream,

or jump stepping
stones, stumble through ruts

in the track
south, smell elderflower in a hedge.

The last one
brings you in from cowfields, directly west

- to crouch on
grass where the centre was.

Gomshall

Cattle, a smudged
mix of Belgian Blue and Friesan,

shuffle towards us
on straw, shove heads through rails,

curious. They're
eating oranges, barley brewers

have finished with,
potato starch from Walkers crisps

- like bored
teenagers whose only entertainment's

a bus shelter,
Saturdays between McDonald's and Burger King.

Lucas farms alone,
predicts it won't be long

before fields are
monitored by satellite,

their 80 foot
tramlines, tracked from space

and the places
where charlock, cleavers, wild oats,

couch grass take
hold on weakened soil,

reduce the yield,
will be clear as the Great Wall.

Subterranea Britannica

(for Malcolm Tadd)

A rock thuds in
the dust. Silent children listen

as its echo floods
a wormery of cellars

stretched to meet
the demand for hour-glasses.

It enters the
shells of their ears, sweeps

over Grace's name
carved in a wall

and the date next
to it, 1644.

It passes a mock
Tyrannosaurus Rex roaring

at pickaxe marks,
expands at a rifle range,

ammunition store,
bomb shelter, hospital.

It shakes 200
plates from a nuclear shelter,

finds its way
upwards, to emerge

into a railway
tunnel, sudden warmth, drizzle.

Outside, the echo
approaches a pensioner

folding £10 into
her purse, a bricklayer

stretching his
arms for relief.

There's no going
back. It searches out

anyone who'll hear
- occupying the space

left by a phone
that rings, then stops.

Women with bleach containers used for collecting water
in Mashau, Venda, South Africa